pectus excavatum: a love story

A 2022 lyric essay about my minor chest deformity and a lack of compassion.

This lyric essay, originally published at the now-defunct (???) Derailleur Press two years ago, is all over the place. (I actually wrote a part two for my creative capstone project, “pectus excavatum: a tragedy.”) I wanted to make sense of my chest divot and started thinking about how it’s a hollow, causing me to feel less compassionate.

Reading it again just makes me think “What a bitch.”

But as I mention on my web site, “I’ve learned that admitting I’m a good villain, flaws and tasteless banter to the brim, makes me a decent hero.”

It was really—what my therapist will probably want to delve in—an act of self-preservation, to “one-up” before someone “does me in.”

At the end of it all, who are we carving room for? (I wanted to say “for whom,” but that’s dumb. Not writing an academic paper here.) Do we let the appropriate people “break up the earth” of our souls?

All these verbatim and air quotes. Sheesh. Forgive me. Working on NYT attempt #3 and watched Poor Things last night, so a lot swimming in my head.

---

In between my breasts,

a dip, a small reserve.

My doctor diagnosed this

sunken gap in my breastbone as:

“mild pectus excavatum.”

This congenital deformity never bothered me until girls in high school

started

wearing

bikinis.

​The polyester-spandex string

stretched over this impasse

between my developing chest.

A formation in utero

ignoring the capacity space for vital organs like a heart and lungs.

An overgrowth of connective tissue,

the sternum calculating this oddity as:

“bore inward and make room.”

​****

When I am grossly selfish and inconsiderate of outcomes, I think of my pressing sternum.

Like a souvenir key chain from a trashy vacation, my concavity offers fond memories of where I fall short in the laws of human compassion and sacrifice.

Like letting that guy think he actually had a chance. He drove four hours to see me, and I ditched him. He had the same name as the love of my life, the only guy I wanted and cried over.

So the poor guy basically never really had a chance.

****

When that other guy admitted his emotional pangs for yours truly and sent it in a request to listen to LCD Soundsystem’s “Oh Baby.”

I could only say “Oh no.”

He bled deep, a gash only sealed by:

Fig. a: my requited love

Fig. b: another lover chosen under rash circumstances

Fig. c: the slow-absorbing salve of time.

For me, he grazed an impassioned swatch of skin.

I easily healed by removing the infection.

Via email.

And then another email because he just didn’t get it.

****

​I’m very good at sabotaging. I’m my personal nurse from hell.

Ripping out IVs of sound advice.

Dispensing incorrect dosages of emotional attachment.

Self-diagnosing while second guessing the Doctor.

Drawing out too much blood.

Tearing scabs because closure means maturity

and surrender

and the slow, shitty process of healing.

​****

And there are times my body is safe and sound. My chest is stable, cradling my pumping heart and ballooning lungs.

This is when fullness, the expanding of these organs, pushes against my casing because it has blessed me to view, better yet, experience the breath-taking, blood-throbbing warm flesh of the human experience.

My child’s heartbeat pressed against me in embrace, reassuring me, lulling me.

A ravenous symphony of laughter with a coworker in the copy room.

Fully giving myself in presence and mind to that one magical person in my life, bodies vulnerable and unfolding.

All of this, forcing my eyes open for a glimpse of the purpose of existence.

My heart on full display, fileted.

My breathing toggling or even momentarily stopping in the gift of exhaustion.

My vagus nerve clamped in joyous syncope.

A gracious interruption to my world.

The beauty of my limitations, my smallness, knowing I have an expiration date.

A dip in my chest cavity that quietly pleads for the gentle grazing of organs.